Waco Fuck – Record review

Waco Fuck

Paranoia is Total Awareness

Anger is a gift, at least when making music. Some really manic but great recordings have been borne out of huge amounts of frustration and anger. Waco Fuck are one seriously angry sounding band. Spend enough time listening to this and you will realize just how much. The album is called Paranoia is Total Awareness and the record label is some small obscurity called Life’s a Rape. It doesn’t get more disillusioned and furious at the state of the world than this piece of plastic.

Paranoia is Total Awareness consists of twenty-three songs, one full-length album put together with their Slow Decay and No Child Left Behind EP’s from 2006 and 2004 respectively.

The music here is an amalgamation of classic grindcore perfected by stalwarts like Napalm Death and Siege along with destructive old school 80’s hardcore in the vein of Negative Approach and Infest to really let the extremity and fury shine through. To top everything of, Waco Fuck are not averse to throwing in some thrash metal bits that are just tangible enough but also subtle enough not to take over from the main focus of their music. Listen to the breakdown and the guitar shredding in “Narcotic Fuckup” for proof.

Strange as it may sound when this kind of music is described, it is a varied album. It is at least varied enough to keep your attention, which is a vital attribute when you have just unleashed a hardcore album consisting of more than twenty songs, especially since many hardcore combos tend to fall on the listener losing interest halfway. I can sincerely say that in the case of this collection, it did not have a detrimental effect. There is enough to keep my interest going all the way.

Many songs do deal completely in grind or power violence, being full of hyper speed drumming and shrieking vocals but some have slow breakdowns or are more based on a beat that really puts the East Coast influence on display. All of them absolutely destroy.

This is a record that completely fills you with energy. These guys may live this but for us working stiffs it’s enough to hear the violent assault of “Mob Mentality” or “Eulogy” and fantasize about being subversive and protesting and it certainly does a sufficient job in getting the heart jumping.

Buy it and get paranoid.

This is a review that I sent over late last week, to Scenepointblank.

I believe that it was posted on the site yesterday but I was too busy to write a blog post and link to it. I’d never heard of these guys before and to be honest still don’t know much more. They have a Myspace page but it’s not exactly stacked with information, they don’t have a we site and their record label is so small that there is no web site to it either. The music, however is quite fantastic. I love hardcore and punk and these guys play that but mix it up with some grindcore which we all know is descendant from punk anyway. East coast hardcore influences like Battalion of saints, Infest and a bit of classic Siege in the mix makes this a great release. I really wish I could catch Waco Fuck live but, living in the UK and these guys being virtually unknow means that I’ll probably have to wait a considerable amount of time. Maybe next time I visit the Us.

In the meantime, go to Scenepointblank to read the review.